Mike and Scott Ducharme had to cut their own lawn. Their dad would beat their ass if they didn’t do it right. First, they had to edge, then they had to mow the front and back lawn, then they had to sweep the driveway and the porch, empty the clippings into the trash. Everything had to be tight. They did a good job and had a nice front lawn and I would know because I put on a tackle football clinic in their front yard a couple of times a week. The Ducharmes didn’t have any fancy power tools, no leaf blowers. They had a rake and a broom, it’s all they needed … still is.

My gardener comes on Wednesday and, mostly, his assignment in the backyard is to blow dirt and leaves into the pool and in the front yard to blow leaves and dirt into the neighbor’s yard. On Friday, the neighbor’s gardener comes and blows all that same shit back into my yard.

Not too long ago, a magazine that does mostly car reviews compared the two-stroke-engine in older-model leaf blowers with a Ford F-150 Raptor pickup truck. They found that a half-hour of yard work using the leaf blower produced the same amount of hydrocarbon emissions as driving the truck 3,887-miles. Alternating the blower between high power and idle, the two-stroke engine emitted nearly 299 times the hydrocarbons of the pickup truck and ninety-three times the hydrocarbons of a typical sedan. It’s a bummer for “electric car guy,” all of that commitment to being green only to be undone in the end by the lowly blower.

The most powerful leaf blowers can create a stream of air exceeding 200 mph. They produce noise levels as high as 112 decibels. Stories of how teachers are forced to stop teaching until the gardeners get out earshot are increasing as the number of blowers in California alone approaches twenty million. Lots of people are pretty chapped about all the noise and pollution, but I’m mostly upset that a guy that really just blows dirt around gets to call himself a gardener.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the typical gardener makes $12.33 per hour or $25,650 a year. That seems kinda low for someone who grooms your lawn and nurtures your plants, seems a tad light for a horticulturist with a Spanish accent. On the other hand, for a dirt blower arounder, twelve bucks an hour seems perfectly reasonable. My mom used to have a guy in the 1970s who would cut her dichondra lawn blade by blade with nail trimmers, he’d sing to the plants, take the lonely ones home with him at night, water all the plants and, finally, hose down the driveway and dry it with his t-shirt. That’s not the way it works today, in fact, some smartypants summed up the job description of the guy who used to be called gardener in just three words – mow, blow & go.

For today’s landscaping engineer the leaf blower is a big job perk. Men like things with engines and the smell of gas on their hands. Strapping on that thirty-pound blower provides a feeling of power, the whole neighborhood pays attention to only you and, while your gardening buddies are on their hands and knees fixing a sprinkler head or pulling up weeds, dirt blower arounder gets to see how long he can keep a sycamore leaf airborne or try to create a dust cloud that can be seen from space.

Before you feel sorry for the dirt blower arounder, keep in mind that with them blowing dirt everywhere – through open windows, into garages, into pools, up your nasal cavity, down your pants – most of these guys are getting kickbacks, sales commissions from other neighborhood service providers like carpet cleaners, window washers, pool cleaners and respiratory therapists.

The guys you should really feel sorry for are the rake and broom and dustpan manufacturers. No one buys these items anymore and I think my old childhood friends Scott and Mike are probably the only ones who still know how to use them.